Working on the Blurb for Ironmaster…

I’m working on the cover for “Ironmaster & Other Tales” and have reached the blurb for the back.

The Cover text is pretty dashing…

I hate writing blurbs… Blurbs are meant to draw the reader in and make them want to read it.

For me they represent trying to cram two or three years of writing into a short pithy paragraph or two, something I find really tricky to get right first time, and usually need a couple of goes at…

Take my latest project, it’s a mosaic novel (already a difficult sell – a collection of linked stories that build a single story, most of the stories are standalone, but some are definitely not) set in an alternative world where the British Royalty allied themselves with ancient Faeries politically to grant every one with titles magic, and vice-versa. It is a Steampunk universe, with a rich Alchemist middle class, who own starships and run trade empires that spread from Earth across the solar system, but few of the stories reflect that, most are set in the same fictional county on the border with Cymru.

Anyway here’s the blurb (it might change as I move through 3rd, and probably, final draft and add illustrations and so on to the body of the text… But because of the way I work, I’m taking the time to make the cover now and so want the blurb for the cover) that I’ve currently got :

From the author of “The Paradox War” trilogy, a new mosaic novel set in a world of Dark-Faery tale magic and Steampunk mad science.

In 1560, Queen Elizabeth I finally sued for peace with the Faeries that plagued her lands. The new Covenant granted noble titles to those with magic and magic to those with titles. Now it’s the 1980s, and after centuries of mage rule, including a recent 30 years of total war in Europa followed by 20 years of uneasy peace, the world is ready to embrace change.

Over 30 tales of Airship Pirates, Flying Monsters, Alchemical Adventurers, Rocket Ninjas, Chthonic Horrors, Mad Scientists, Occult Detectives, Dog-Headed Cops, Folk-Magicians, Seelie and Unseelie Faeries, Infernal Conspiracies, Sorceress-Queens, and Punk-Rocker Spies, build into the story of a revolution, and a Civil War that will change the doom of a whole universe.

The spine of the new book cover

What do you think? More importantly do any of my Beta readers (or Alpha readers) think that I’ve missed something important or given too much away?

Would you want to read the book that had that blurb? Or would something about it turn you off?